Sequential Subdivisions Scrivener Error in Deed = Modern Day Problems
When dealing with the original states’ metes and bounds boundary descriptions, it requires surveyors to go back to the original intent “day of creation” of each conveyance and sometimes even to the original land patent. This usually takes an enormous amount of time and can/should/will be costly. However property disputes are costly on many levels and many various modern surveyor’s opinions can result without doing the due diligence needed to explain the impossible torture of the property lines to make original tract’s parcels fit together. If there are three or more subdivisions in sequence, if one of the earlier ones has a number reversal in the length of a line, it changes the area of all the other subdivisions that follow it. So what happens in the modern era of surveyors, the most senior property that came first gets reapportioned to give up land due to the unseen error by creatively changing the interpretation of the metes and bounds typical metes and bounds “stone to tree” straight line description. Have seen everything from a “missing leg” theory to a “must have been” riparian boundary to both the tree and the stone being the intended middle point in a stream. The original senior parcel boundary from which the others were subdivided closes at a 0.0 %. The others have lots of error and an error in the length of one line due to a number reversal in the middle of a multi number sequence. Simple understanding of mathematics to the rescue. Fix the number reversal and the original intent length becomes possible, clear and evident. What is sad is how many properties and people are negatively affected 100 or 200 years later as the ability to precisely measure any line does zero justice to finding where the line is / was originally and then measuring it. Complete and accurate research doesn’t cost as much as the same thousands of dollars cumulatively wasted on later strings of misaligned surveyor opinions, bitter neighbors, lawsuits, and something that never seems to add up right….
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